The invention relates to management of computer systems.
A collection of resources or components within a system can typically be represented as a hierarchy of objects. Such a representation can be helpful for management, for example for remote management of part or all of the system.
In a complex computer system, that may involve parts of the system being implemented on different platforms, providing efficient interfaces for the management of a potentially large amount of management information becomes difficult, especially in that the management information can relate potentially to a set of different platforms.
Administrators need a standard, common representation of the systems that they are managing in their environment. Such a representation may be made through a Management Information Base (MIB) or other formal management schema. This enables administrators to customize their management applications once and have that same customization work across a variety of systems and components. To provide such commonality the same management model should be used across the platforms/components and ensure the population of that model is consistent and uniform regardless of the entity responsible for that population.
However, systems and components vary with respect to the availability of the management information that is required for such a model. There are two dimensions to these variations. Firstly, the mechanism by which data is made available by the component can vary. For example, there may be different APIs and/or protocols. Secondly, the data used to represent a particular (sub)entity may vary. The variation may be a subtle naming difference, a different use of units, or a very different representation. As a result of these variations, management agents responsible for providing the data to the administrator have to be developed on a platform by platform basis. This can lead to further inconsistencies with the presentation of data and the application of management policies.
Accordingly, the invention relates to improving access to system management information in a computer system.